It might seem incredulous, but even on the day of 9/11 ... I told my boss ... I told my wife ... "we will do nothing" ... meaning "nothing effective" ... meaning "we will not defeat the enemy" ... meaning "we will not destroy the enemies will to fight" ... and unfortunately ... it was worse than true. The "patriot act" gave up freedoms to the statists that we will never get back ... and thousands of lives have been lost on all sides of the conflict and we are 10 times more broke than we already were ... and nothing has been accomplished.

And worse, the "people" have not learned ... there is still no will to defend their on lives on the part of the people ... and when a people give up on the idea of defending their own lives ... they are done ...

It might seem incredulous, but even on the day of 9/11 ... I told my boss ... I told my wife ... "we will do nothing" ... meaning "nothing effective" ... meaning "we will not defeat the enemy" ... meaning "we will not destroy the enemies will to fight" ... and unfortunately ... it was worse than true. The "patriot act" gave up freedoms to the statists that we will never get back ... and thousands of lives have been lost on all sides of the conflict and we are 10 times more broke than we already were ... and nothing has been accomplished.

And worse, the "people" have not learned ... there is still no will to defend their on lives on the part of the people ... and when a people give up on the idea of defending their own lives ... they are done ...

I don't exactly disagree, but I also don't exactly agree. I look at it like this: even if it is not "defeated" Islam cannot persist in the modern age. Perhaps it will take 500 years for Islam to reach the point that fundamentalist Christianity (Catholicism mostly, but not entirely) had reached by 1900, i.e., where its total power over Western Civilization was effectively eclipsed and the Protestant and Secular worldviews the reformation spawned had gained predominance. Evolutionary Theory, Astronomical Cosmology, Microbiology, Physics, etc., were all the rage by 1900, even as early as the 1880s and there was NO going back from that. Indeed, Fundamentalist Christianity in its most dogmatic, totalitarian and violent forms had been losing ground for centuries really and depending on which scholar you ask, they may identify any number of preceding watersheds at which point they'd deem "Power of Fundamentalist Christianity Was Eclipsed HERE!"

The main point is: at some point after 1500 IT HAPPENED. Christianity stopped being the main source of war and pestilence, oppression and ignorance and suffering . . . mostly. This is also INEVITABLY going to happen to Islam. It is impossible for Islam to exist in the brains of the bipedal apes I've spent my entire adult life studying and NOT suffer this fate, at this stage in history.

So even if "The West" does little more than bend over and take every subsequent suicide bomb they thrust our way and do little more than wince each time, Islam is NOT going to "win." It is really just a matter of how much damage and suffering it can cause before it is inevitably destroyed by reformationist forces from within. And this brings up another point: it is almost impossible for "The West" to impose something like a reformation on the Islamic world. 1.2 billion people spread out over most of the globe . . . yeah, that ain't happenin.'

Under ideal conditions, what might have been accomplished by the "War(s) on Terror" which have drug on these past 18 years? It is quite possible that, not much more could have been accomplished beyond what was accomplished. But if we entertain ideals perhaps we could imagine some better outcomes.

For one, Western casualties and costs might have been kept a LOT lower if the approach had been a "Deter and Punish by Firepower Alone" approach, instead of what it was: some kind of half-baked combination of "Shock and Awe" and "Rebuild and Reform by Good Example."

I typed out a long-winded "what-if" on here at one point. I think it was in the "Afghanistan: Running Before Victory" thread. The basic idea was: for every CASUALTY (not death, just even a wound) which is suffered by Westerners at the hand of an Islamic Supremacist operative, there will be an analysis of the support networks, command & control, training, political/ideological allegiance and social backing of the perpetrator. The allegiances of the perpetrators will be identified and published, and those allies of the perpetrator will be considered to have been culpable in part for his/her actions. Punitive measures of a material and financial (if not human toll) nature will be exacted according to formulaic standards. $1BEELION dollars of damage will be inflicted for each Western casualty. Appropriate warning of attacks will be given to allow areas to be evacuated and we are not responsible for casualties . . . something like that.

It is worth noting:(they are not "terrorrists," which is a nonsensical word which apologizes for the social and political entities which recruit, train and command them . . . they are irregular operatives or guerrillas. They have command networks, financial backers, tutors/mentors, allegiances/support systems and ultimately communities which provide them moral and social support. The idea that they DO NOT was always insulting to the intelligence. Those sources of support were to be identified and held responsible by imposing physical costs on them (as well as cost in lives IF they were too negligent to evacuate areas that were being warned to be destroyed).

I believe there were something like 6000 casualties from 9/11 so that was $6,000,000,000,000,000 that shoulda been comin' the way of Saudi, and several of the other gulf states and Afghanistan. Not to say that all of them would have been due 6 Quadrillion dollars of damage . . . but that total would have been distributed around to all the nation states/city states who were the "home bases" for those 21 operatives. An option to pay back the damages could have potentially been offered, but with the proviso that it needed to be paid within one week (or some similarly short term). Faced with the prospect of hundreds of trillions of dollars of damages to their cities, I suspect KSA, Qatar, etc. would have been hopping like mad to figure out a way to avert that kind of devastation. That much damage would have put them into the Stone Ages even IF there were zero casualties cased directly; there would have been millions dead in the weeks and months that followed, and likely civil war and regime change. We would've certainly lost planes and crews but if most of the damage was done with standoff weapons then maybe not so many.

The problem of course was: George Bush and his crew were morons, and the kind of clever gamesmanship I'm suggesting there was way above their level of mastery of international relations. Very likely Cheney and several of the others WERE in fact, also seeking to pump cash flow into their own crony networks too. It may sound wild to respond to an unannounced act of war executed by a decentralized irregular military formation that does not explicitly claim any allegiance to any sovereign (except perhaps the Taliban government, I think Al Qaeda wasn't entirely cagey about their relationship with that entity), but lots stranger stuff have been done down through the centuries. I bet a clever team of diplomats and lawyers could find plenty of precedent for this type of approach and the policy documents and legal statements could've been drawn up within a couple of weeks! It would've represented the least costly way to impose the greatest cost on the enemy and arguably at least as much deterrent as was actually achieved . . . although killing several million militant Muslims [and likely wounding or even crippling 2 or 3 times as many millions more] over the course of 18 or 19 years was probably a pretty big deterrent . . . I seem to recall that, at one point during Obama's reign when IS was at its peak, they were recruiting from quite far afield in the Islamic world and that shows that: local troop reserves had been somewhat depleted.

The bottom line of all this bullshit is that we could and still can put an end to much of this terrorism if we really wanted. We didn't need to invade Afghanistan, for example, and don't need to stay there. All we needed to have done is wipe out their Opium production with some strange and toxic chemical and continue to do so until they gave up OBL.

Narco-terroism has turned Mexico into a war zone and once again, we just need to destroy the drug production where ever it may be, such as Columbia.

Of course, there will be some who cry that indigenous folks will be harmed by such a campaign. There will be pictures of deformed babies.

Tough.

_________________"In this present crisis, Government is not the solution to our problem; Government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan

Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:26 pmPosts: 4139Location: not the end of the world but you can see it from hereReputation points: 12189

Lava wrote:

The bottom line of all this bullshit is that we could and still can put an end to much of this terrorism if we really wanted. We didn't need to invade Afghanistan, for example, and don't need to stay there. All we needed to have done is wipe out their Opium production with some strange and toxic chemical and continue to do so until they gave up OBL.

Narco-terroism has turned Mexico into a war zone and once again, we just need to destroy the drug production where ever it may be, such as Columbia.

Of course, there will be some who cry that indigenous folks will be harmed by such a campaign. There will be pictures of deformed babies.

Tough.

Don't need anything strange as I doubt they are making Round Up or 2,4-D resistant opium poppies or marijuana plants. Always figured it would make more sense to destroy the source rather than trying to catch the smugglers.

_________________Texas, where we have the death penalty and aren't afraid to use it! Build the wall!!

Don't need anything strange as I doubt they are making Round Up or 2,4-D resistant opium poppies or marijuana plants. Always figured it would make more sense to destroy the source rather than trying to catch the smugglers.

Even more reason.

The same approach could have been used against Saddam Hussain. If we believed he was making "Weapons of Mass Destruction," simply go in there with a couple B-2s and destroy the facilities. Same can be said for the Iranian Assatollas.

I have no idea why we persist in combating external problems with blood and treasure. The simplest remedy is almost always the best.

_________________"In this present crisis, Government is not the solution to our problem; Government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan

Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:26 pmPosts: 4139Location: not the end of the world but you can see it from hereReputation points: 12189

Can't imagine it would be too hard to design a drone to do the spraying and some guy sitting in a trailer in Nevada could do a bunch of damage in Colombia. Or take Fuel Air Explosive bombs, replace the fuel with herbicide and ditch the explosive and let some of the Air Force/Navy get some ground attack training.

_________________Texas, where we have the death penalty and aren't afraid to use it! Build the wall!!

Why hasn't it happened? Because of all the fucking corrupted folks who make millions if not billions world wide from the Narcos and the drug trade.

Imagine, if you can, what would have happened if we had destroyed the Taliban's Opium source of income and they handed over to us OBL without a war. The precedent set would have been directed immediately at solving our drug related problems in the Americas.

Can't have that now, can we?

_________________"In this present crisis, Government is not the solution to our problem; Government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan

... So even if "The West" does little more than bend over and take every subsequent suicide bomb they thrust our way and do little more than wince each time, Islam is NOT going to "win." It is really just a matter of how much damage and suffering it can cause before it is inevitably destroyed by reformationist forces from within. And this brings up another point: it is almost impossible for "The West" to impose something like a reformation on the Islamic world. 1.2 billion people spread out over most of the globe . . . yeah, that ain't happenin.'

I agree with this ... BUT ... I think we could accelerate the reformation by opening law schools and medical schools for moozlim women only. Let them be doctors and lawyers and such. Give the Omar's and Talib's of the world something useful to do. That's at the strategic level. At the tactical level, we should hit back HARD whenever attacked. Nuke TTHM ... and appropriate edifae in Afghanistan ... that shows we can communicate at their level. "Phuque Me" ?? "Phuque You" !!

==But yes, if nothing else will, the internet will kill 7 century moozlum-ism ... it's already happening ... but the moolahs are pushing back ... and that leads to situations like the talilban and "isis" ... these are actually part of the death dance of 7C moozlum ism .. but it is a painful death dance for all concerned ...

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